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ACTA passed one of the several voting gates it needs to get through before becoming law.

It was ratified in Poland last night.  This was the scene at Polish parliament afterwards, as (presumably) a bloc of anti-ACTA politicians expressed their displeasure and, perhaps without knowing it, foretell of the Anonymous repercussions to this bill.

Some things you should know:

• Online petitions are meaningless.  While they are well-intentioned and organized, the signing of a digital petition takes about twenty seconds, and does not require that you leave your beanbag chair in the coal cellar.  Politicians know this, and pay just as much attention to online petitions as is warranted by a “political action” that is literally less strenuous than leaving a YouTube comment.
• Nothing except direct action is going to do a goddamn thing.  This means getting out in the street, it means DDoSing, it means vicious and widespread boycotts, site blackouts, and other strongarm tactics that actually impact the flow of money from corporations to lobbyists to politicians.  How do you, as a tiny flailing consumer, do this?  You can’t, really.  You can join up with groups that are intent on doing actions that actually mean something, adding your voice to a chorus of hundreds or thousands, instead of screaming alone.  You can contact celebrities, the spokespeople of our time, as ask them to leverage their followers on the issue.  You can write to Tumblr and ask for more blackouts.  None of these things will be very effective, so don’t be too disappointed when they don’t work, but they sure as fuck are more effective than online petitions, and the intense response to SOPA by corporations and consumers was responsible for getting it “tabled” (not dead, but dreaming lies).
• ACTA was already signed by Obama in September of 2011.  He had been praising the bill for over a year prior, and signed it without reservation.  Most of us didn’t hear about it, and he likely used the 9/11 coverage to make sure of that.
  
  
• Eventually, one of these bills will pass, and the pro-corporate laws will go into effect.  Expect it.  Be prepared.  Learn to circumvent this garbage and you’ll have a leg up when the feds shut down the internet as we know it.
  
  
• The best thing you can do now is install Tor and learn how to use it.  Tor is free software and an open network that helps you defend against a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security known as traffic analysis.  In order to circumvent the coming corporate takeover of the web, we’re going to have to go underground, creating a sub-internet of encrypted nodes known as a “darknet”.  It’s probably going to be like the internet was in the beginning, with most people only seeing what AOL wanted them to see, and only a small group of super-nerds existing outside of that bubble in the “real” internet.  It’ll take another twenty years for them to catch up to us again.
  
  
• Welcome to the grim cyberpunk future.

Obama signed the treaty, but it has to be ratified by the senate.  So at least for the time being it’s meaningless.

But hey guess who won’t get my vote this coming election.

Politicians know that a petition takes 20 seconds to sign.  But they also know that most people can’t even be assed to spend 20 seconds to sign something either, let alone call or write them.  So even just a few letters on the same topic can tip them off.

In the case of SOPA it got enough attention that it became an apparent political liability. It’s not something politicians want to say they support anymore.  Even the ones that stand by it would rather nobody bring it up at this point. 

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